


Bridger

by skeleteen



Series: non-human stiles fics [3]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, Alternate Universe - No Werewolves, Angst and Feels, Barely PG Like Mostly Friendship and Fluffy Relationship Build, But Dear God, But You Get It, Everyone Is Magic, Fluff and Angst, Ghost Laura Hale, Ghost Talia Hale, Government Conspiracy, It's Not Magic If It's Their Normal, Kate Does Not Exist, Kinda, M/M, Medium Stiles, No Sex, So many tags, Stiles Stilinski Sees Ghosts, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Translation Available, Which I Die For
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-23
Updated: 2016-08-23
Packaged: 2018-08-10 13:34:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7847092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skeleteen/pseuds/skeleteen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All the medicine gives him nosebleeds. He hates the nosebleeds, but bridgers don't get a choice. They're legally required to subdue their powers. </p><p>Stiles has never been good at following the rules.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bridger

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Español available: [Bridger](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13957248) by [takkane](https://archiveofourown.org/users/takkane/pseuds/takkane)



All the medicine gives him nosebleeds. He  _ hates  _ the nosebleeds, but the alternative to not taking the colourful pills is a one way ticket into a looney bin.

Stiles has been drugged up since his powers were diagnosed. Some people get cool party tricks like mild levitation, while others are recruited by the government with powers like night vision. A select few, however, are given a prescription and told to never attempt to test their abilities.

He terrified all the people who assessed him. As far as he could tell, he was some form of bridger. Bridger is the slang term for some long classified name that nobody really knows meaning a bridge between life and death. It's a bit of a hassle determining who is alive and who is dead when you can see both roaming the streets freely, so the government insisted on suppressing his ability altogether in order to ‘avoid confusion’. They’re mostly just afraid some people they killed off are going to start talking without a way to shut them up.

Really, the average bridgers just get feelings from objects of people who died or have wicked dreams communicating with the dead like they're a talk show host - those are the ones that get to keep their powers - but Stiles was much different than the funny feelings that warrant psychic booths at carnivals.

He had been seeing ‘ghosts’ (that's what the government called them, but each passed person uses a different term) for his entire childhood. They walked among him like the living, unlike any power seen before. Having them removed right before he started kindergarten left him anxious and closed off.

It's been roughly thirteen years of daily blue pills and shaky hands and nosebleeds. 

He's never felt more like a ghost himself.

 

○

 

Mrs. Blake, his history teacher, hands him a Kleenex. He sighs, leaning his head back and gingerly exiting the classroom. The thin tissue barely soaks up the blood dripping out of his nose like a leaky faucet.

He's supposed to take a green pill when his nose bleeds. The blood is his body finding an outlet to put the unused power. It’s a stimulant of sorts, tricking his body into thinking it's not half shut down.

He stares at the pill with disdain. 

Sometimes he feels like it stares back mockingly.

He takes a deep breath and drops it into the trash bin on his way back to class.

 

○

 

When he goes to bed, he doesn't take his pink pill. That one is for regular strength bridgers, to stop dreams. 

It makes him wake up feeling more tired than when he went to sleep, like his body spent all night _fighting_ to see only to lose. It’s become normal.

He never even got to see if he would develop dreams. He resents the fact that he listened to the government blindly for so long.

When he sleeps, he feels light. No dreams come to him, but it feels like there's a possibility of a picture in the smoke somewhere that makes it worthwhile.

He wakes up feeling brand new.

 

○

 

The blue pill is specially made for him. It contains just about every suppressant that the government has created, disrupting certain connections in his brain.

Stiles nods when his dad asks if he took it, smiling briefly as he thinks about how it looked swirling down the toilet.

 

○

 

He continues with the pill-less routine for another day.

He dreams of his mother. She tells him she's proud of him for exploring himself and hugs him tight, telling him she’s unable to walk the earth anymore but he can find her in his sleep. He can feel her hair in his hands when he hugs her - brown, like his.

She's been dead for nine years.

Stiles is angry when he wakes up, realizing he could have been hugging her for roughly 3000 nights in a row without the haze of the pink pill.

He could have had her walk him to school.

Oh, the things he could have had.

He lets the resentment fester, allows it to  _ fuel  _ him.

 

○

 

He sees his first ghost (or, the first he’s noticed isn’t alive) since coming off his drug dependency on the third day while taking the city bus to a dentist appointment. He’s writing in his journal when he looks up and holds eye contact with a young woman. She looks frantic at his attention.

“You see me!” She cries, running to sit beside him. Stiles realizes she isn't really there when nobody else reacts to her.

_ I have been off my medication for three days.  _ He jots into his planner, leaning the journal into her frame of view and allowing her to read it.

“Can I follow you home?” She pleads. “I need to talk. You're the only one who can listen.”

_ Dentist appointment now. You can follow me all day. I have questions too!  _ He adds a smiley face for good measure, because how do you communicate with someone who died?

“I have answers.” She smiles. “My name is Laura Hale. I could communicate with nature when I was alive. I was a Park Ranger.”

_ Stiles Stilinski,  _ he writes.  _ I’m seventeen and completely unsure of my abilities!!!! _

“Well, Stiles, I think you'll find yourself enamored with the afterlife in no time.”

He grins to himself. Or is he grinning to her? Either way, he has no doubt that her words will ring true.

 

○

 

The dentist is boring. He's on edge, using Laura to determine who is or isn't alive. Apparently those who've passed can dress however they want, which causes confusion when their outfit of choice is that of a dental hygienist. He smiled at one before Laura told him that the man wasn’t ‘really there’.

He plays tic-tac-toe in his journal on the bus ride home. Laura was the O’s. 

“We can't pick anything up or make marks in the ground!” She squeals. “Please tell me you have Candy Land!”

He fought off a smile the entire way at her enthusiasm towards being able to play the child's game.

 

○

 

“So, what do you need?” He asks, closing his bedroom door in habit after Laura enters. His dad is working late (he usually does, as the county Sheriff), so he doesn't have to worry about his volume.

“I need you to talk to Derek Hale.” She crawls onto his bed, making herself comfortable. 

“Can you even appreciate the fluffiness of my blankets?” He furrows his eyebrows at her, plopping onto his beanbag chair in the corner of the room. “Wait. Isn't Derek Hale in my grade?”

She nods. “Yes to both. People not like you don't see the blankets move, but  _ you  _ can appreciate how I appreciate a good bed.” She shifts his pillows a little and sighs in contentment. “Derek is my knobhead of a younger brother. He’s got some built in lie detector for a power. The FBI is hiring him straight after he graduates.”

“Cora, your sister, is the year below us, right? She's the microbabe.” He recalls, laughing. “She heats stuff up, but can never burn it. They made some dumb nickname off of the word microwave.”

“That just makes it sound like she's tiny.”

“Hey, powers present when you’re a toddler. She was the cutest kid in kindergarten, and that was creative as hell considering the age.”

Laura laughs. “I’ve only met one other person who could  _ hear  _ me and he immediately realized he was off his medication and popped a pill. It was a fluke accident.”

“How long have you been dead?” Stiles frowns.

“Two years.”

He winces. “How'd you die? You were alive after the house fire that killed the rest of your family. Uh, not to be insensitive or anything.”

“Animal accident.” She shrugs. “I love nature, I controlled it, I thrived in it, but it killed me.”

“You controlled the plants though, not the animals.” He comments with a tilted head.

She nods. “Derek thinks the fire is his fault, though. That’s what I need your help with.”

“Where’s… uh… the rest of your family?” He cringes.

“They passed into the final realm.” She sighs. “Well before  _ I  _ died. They gave up. I don’t blame them, because they didn’t expect me to die any time soon, but I could have used their help.” 

“There’s another realm?” He sits up straight, excited. “Can I see it?”

“In dreams.” She nods slowly.

He deflates. “My mom passed, then.”

She gives him a sympathetic nod.

_ Oh, the things he could have had. _

 

○

 

“What are you doing here?” He’s shoved against the wall of the charred Hale house. He knows Derek and Cora live with their uncle in an apartment, but Laura gave him directions to where the eldest boy spends most of his time - the charred ruins of his childhood home.

He smiles at the interaction, ignoring the hand pressing against his neck. 

“Bridger.” He says softly. “Was looking for you.”

He’s dropped immediately.

“Aren’t you supposed to be on meds?”   
“Is that fear in your voice?” He grins at the sight of Derek Hale, buff and brooding lacrosse star, afraid of  _ him _ . “Laura told me what your power is, you know. You’re going to work for the same guys who were preventing me from talking to her. Is that irony?”

“You’re delusional.” Derek growls. 

Laura sighs. “He’s always been stubborn.”

“I don’t have a way to prove it - he can tell I’m not lying.” He shrugs at her and Derek’s glare intensifies. 

“Stop that.”

“Stop what?”

“She’s  _ dead _ , moron.”

“Yeah, I’m aware, hence why she showed up after I stopped taking my meds.” He rolls his eyes.

“So you  _ are  _ off your meds!”

“Never felt better.” He smiles. “Laura wants to talk to you about,” He waves his hand to gesture to the burnt house, “this.”

He shakes his head, stepping back and putting space between him and Stiles.

“Not here.”

Laura’s face lights up.

“But you  _ will _ listen?” He feels himself adopting some of her enthusiasm.

He nods.

 

○

 

“You know I’m telling the truth.” Stiles mumbles, spreading his entire body across Derek’s couch with ease.

“Make yourself at home.” Derek grumbles sarcastically, taking a seat in a chair opposite him.

Laura snickers, taking a seat on the carpet between the two. “Tell him I miss his poker face.”

“She misses your poker face.” He repeats, humming blissfully.

Derek’s hard expression breaks with a slight grin. “I had the worst poker face growing up.”   
“I’m sure it was cute.” Stiles smiles.

“It was adorable.” Laura chuckles.

“I feel so light.” Stiles muses. “There’s so much energy I’ve been missing out on.”

“They really just shut off your power?”

“Like a switch.” He sighs. “A switch with a bucket of pills and side effects that I legally can’t get out of taking.”

“The teachers are always lying when they say they hate seeing your nose bleed and stuff.” Derek shrugs despondently. “I think they think it’s a greater good scenario. They’re scared.”

“ _ You  _ were scared.” Stiles grins.

“I’m scared of  _ Laura _ , not you.”

Laura snorts. “Damn straight.”

“I thought she was scary, but then she asked me to play Candy Land.” Laura smacks him upside the head, and although he shouldn’t feel it, he’s moved by it. His hair whooshes and he coughs, laughing. “She hit me! I take it back, you’re scary!”

“I wish I could see her.” Derek laughs shakily, blinking quickly. 

“She looks horrible.” He sighs theatrically, rubbing the back of his head. “Truly, I now know the meaning of ugliness.”

She rolls her eyes.

“She explained the whole situation with your family, though, which is so,” He searches for a word, but settles for a grimace. “I mean, you really blame yourself for their deaths?” 

“It’s more guilt.” He shrugs honestly. “I snuck out. Laura already moved out and Cora was at a friend’s house. My mom told me I couldn’t go out to a party, and I got upset, jealous, whatever.” He pauses for a moment, letting out a shaky breath. “My mom almost got out, but she went into my room looking for me first.”

“You can’t seriously believe-”

“If I was there, I could have helped. I’m a light sleeper. I would have been able to carry my little brother out, but now he’s dead. I should have been able to wake up my dad, but he’s  _ dead _ .” He chokes on the last word.

Laura doesn’t stop herself from crying. She tries to touch his arm, but he doesn’t react, causing her to shake with a sob.

“You could have, would have, should have done  _ anything _ . You could have died falling out of your bedroom window trying to sneak out, but you didn’t.” Stiles reaches out to Laura, grabbing her hand and rubbing his thumb over her shaking fingers. “There are endless possibilities, but it’s your choice on whether or not you live with what actually happened. Because you know what I think? You’re lucky.”

“My dad, uncle, mom, and little brother all died in the same night, followed by my older sister being mauled in an animal accident, and you’re calling me lucky?” 

“But you’re alive.” He blinks back the moisture from his own eyes. “And I can see how death is affecting Laura. Do you think if Cora would have not gone to a friends house, that your family might have made an impromptu trip to your grandparents house?”

Derek frowns. “Of course not.”

“Please stop blaming yourself.” His voice comes out barely above a whisper. 

Despite the wrinkle in his forehead, he nods and accepts a hug from Stiles, and to Laura, it looks like freedom.

 

○

 

Laura disappears a month later. Stiles walks into his room one day and finds her standing there, laying in his bed, listening to music from his computer.

“Do you think they have The Eagles in the next realm?” She ponders, voice void of emotion. “Or does the artist have to die first?”

“A world without Hotel California is no world at all.”

She smiles. “Thank you.”

He didn’t bother shoving her out of his bed, understanding that the thanks was for more than just his love for The Eagles, and falls asleep with her by his side. 

When he wakes up, she’s gone, and somehow he knows that it’s for good.

 

○

 

He stops taking his pills altogether, and by the time graduation rolls around, Derek and him have formed a pseudo-friendship. They give a  _ sup  _ nod when they see each other in the halls, and occasionally Derek pulls him away from staring at someone who isn’t  _ really _ there for a suspiciously long time. 

He dreams of his mother more and more. She’s so proud of him that it hurts him to think about being without her for so long. He still doesn’t tell his dad about being off his medication. He’s noticed that he finds less bloody tissues from all the nosebleeds, but Stiles faking a headache every now and then makes him forget about it. 

He walks across the stage, reminding himself to not trip over the blue robe, and accepts a diploma from a teacher that Derek confirmed doesn’t like him. He smiles towards his dad, who’s holding up a camera, and listens to the announcer read off his University of choice.

When they get around to Derek, they don’t read off the Federal Bureau of Investigation job position he expects, but rather reveal that he’s going into social work, some not-for-profit organization that will allow him to use his ability to help victims of violence and abuse get justice by verifying their stories.

Stiles’s jaw drops slightly, but he doesn’t notice, fixated on Derek smiling at him genuinely from the stage. He doesn’t pause for a photo, there’s no living relative to take one, but he’s well aware of what that means to Stiles.

He remembers calling out the irony in Derek working for the same people that prevented him from talking to his sister, the anger that bubbled inside of him at the thought, and feels unbreakable.

  
  


○

 

“You asshole, you let me think you were going to continue with the government!” Stiles hits Derek’s chest, who stares at him with a grin. 

“I wanted to surprise you.” He smiles, and Stiles can't be mad at him.

“Why did you do it?” Stiles sounds small when he asks.

“Because a very beautiful friend of mine has struggled for no reason at their hands.” He takes a step closer. “And I’d much rather help people without the shadow of those assholes.”

“I think I’m stupidly in love with you.” Stiles smiles, the confession erupting nervous butterflies in his stomach.

“I know I’m stupidly in love with you.” Derek replies confidently.

He moves the tassel from Stiles’ cap out of the way, and Stiles can’t help but relate it to the football player moving the strand of hair behind the cheerleader’s ear in a movie.

The kiss kind of helps seal the deal.

 

○

 

Laura starts appearing in his dreams with people he’s never seen before.

“This is Max.” Laura smiles, picking up a kid who seems to be around seven or eight. “He’s our little brother.”

Stiles feels his words catch in his throat, staring at the child like he’s a time bomb.

“Tell Derek I miss him and that I love him  _ sooooo  _ much and that Dad taught me how to play basketball so we can play later-”

“Okay, kiddo, he’s only going to remember so much of this.” Laura chuckles.   
Stiles nods quickly, laughing. “Yeah, I’ll tell him, bud.”

“Thanks!” He smiles. 

Stiles wakes up and stares at the ceiling for a while, thinking about his life prior to Laura.

He calls Derek.

“Babe?”

“Max,” He laughs, filled with joyful disbelief. “Wants you to know that he knows how to play basketball and will be ready to play you when you cross over.”

He hears a small gasp from the other line, and then a quiet laugh. “Did he still have a mohawk?”

“Bright green at the tips.” He nods, even though he knows he can’t see him.

“What a dork.” Derek mutters. “Thanks. How’s your day going?”

Stiles turns his gaze to the corner of his room, where three ghosts sit around his desk area with expectant gazes, feeling a grin tug at the corner of his lips. “It’s going.”

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed this! Please leave a comment/review on your way out.
> 
> If you enjoy my work(s), please consider buying me a coffee/supporting what I do so I can keep doing it: ko-fi.com/skeleteen


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